Nonsanity suggests the following:

Imagining: the ship chunk is made from unbreakable blocks. You dig out under it and place palette blocks under its footprint. Then drive up to that with a forklift. The ship vanishes and the forklift gets a tarp-covered generalized model on the front of it to show it’s loaded. Drive up to the train and the tarp-model is moved to that. Reverse the process on the other end.

This could fit in well with some of the crane type stuff that has been asked for in the steelworks mod I am thinking of creating at some point